Supergirl Season 4: 5 Ups & 4 Downs From ‘Crime And Punishment’

2. Brainy's Exposition-Filled Monologue

While Colonel Haley's character arc was handled beautifully, the same could not be said for another character who was facing a difficult choice.

Brainiac-5 found himself caught between a rock and a hard place as he couldn't decide whether or not he should delete the Alien Registry from the D.E.O.'s database. How do we know all this, you ask? Well, because he only went and told us, didn't he? Yeah that's right, he told us and nobody else.

Sitting down in the most secure part of the D.E.O.'s headquarters, he unleashed a monologue, informing the viewers of every single thing that was on his mind, eventually deducing that the pros/cons scale was literally 50/50. Not only was it silly to voice such a dilemma out loud when there were armed guards around him, it was a highly expository scene that literally told us everything instead of relaying it through a more effective means.

While Brainy's semi-robotic behaviour does give him somewhat of a pass, the fact that this took place in the same episode in which James was able to talk about his concerns to a therapist (a clever device to avoid unnecessary exposition) really made this stand out for all the wrong reasons. To make matters worse, he then told Nia Nal of his dilemma, reiterating everything he said in a much more condensed, less expositional conversation! So, in all honesty, what was the point of the monologue?

Guess subtlety really is dead.